"What protection?" asks Marisa, still writing at her table.

"Don't see any point defenses, no pirate fighters deployed but there's probably a few in the command ship at least. These ships are well-armored but their armaments are mainly for carving hulls. The command ship probably has missile batteries or something similar."

"Command ship's mine, then, but break off and engage any fighters they happen to launch. I'm fine with missiles."

Marisa slides neatly out from behind her table of notes without disturbing any, and scurries to her bunk a few feet away.

Samus accelerates toward the ongoing battle, firing on the pirate cruiser which is actively carving pieces out of the Federation cruiser. She applies a good amount of roll to the gunship, corkscrewing inward; this acceleration leaves the contents of the ship undisturbed thanks to the physics of a much more advanced people than humanity. Not a paper slides out of place.

The witch exiting the ship on a broom, however, can take advantage of the roll for a boost towards the command cruiser, still sitting idly in its orbit.

The enemy probably noticed the jettisoned human. But it probably doesn't consider a jettisoned human threatening. (If it were Samus, fully armored, it would; she has a reputation.)

A minute of cast time would definitely put them on their guard, but she can likely afford to spend fifteen seconds visibly flaring with magic power for the sake of a powerful alpha strike.

The command cruiser has scrambled five fighters to engage Samus's gunship. The cruisers aren't really equipped to hit small targets.

It's worth quietly waiting for them to be closer to Samus's battle than to Marisa, then.

She can deal with these fighters! But she'll have to pay attention to them, fire on them, and fire on the command cruiser less or not at all.

Enemy fighters are approaching. These five are probably all the enemy can field. Which makes it a good time to expend dumbfire missiles on the cruiser currently under her guns.

The Federation cruiser isn't doing much. It's probably a combination of having had important systems damaged and not really being prepared for combat. If she wants to keep these fighters occupied, she has to threaten destruction of an enemy vessel. Realistically, she won't keep all five on her.

She allows herself to get hit by a few stray fighter shots before breaking to engage them. Certain pirate clans tend to avoid engaging enemies they can't hit as a matter of doctrine, just staying alive and pointing their weapons elsewhere; in this case, it would be at the Federation cruiser she's trying to protect, after realizing that Marisa is a threat and that they can't hit her. This isn't this clan's doctrine, as far as she knows, but it doesn't hurt.

And now it's time.

The ミニmini八卦炉eight trigram reactor is possibly the most valuable equipment on this battlefield. (The only competition is Samus Aran's armor, to the extent that it's equipment rather than biology.) It's not all that much to look at; you could imagine someone without all that much taste keeping it on a shelf as a decoration. A small octagonal wooden block engraved with the eight trigrams, metal crucible visible in the center.

Its maximum power output is probably not infinite; few things are truly infinite. It's high enough that the limiting factor is Marisa's mental capacity, and Marisa studies hard. In a way, it's a device that transmutes her attentional capacity and mental modeling facility into firepower.

Fifteen seconds to charge; this is not a power buildup in the reactor, but a mathematical system taking form in her mind. As she thinks it through, she can more efficiently transform the limitless power available to her from potentiality to actuality. She's glowing in a way impossible to ignore, but pirate clans aren't great at reacting to the unexpected; the enemy gunner will not be permitted the initiative to fire on her immediately. (Which wouldn't be dangerous to her, but would make it harder to concentrate.) And this cruiser definitely doesn't rate a Brain.

In a duel, she can precompute firing patterns onto a talisman, for aesthetics rather than destructiveness. This is not a duel, and the magic being fired is not merely the dueling-concept of a destructive spell. It's a spell that appears in one of the back sections of her grimoire, for true life-and-death combat.

反anti-主力艦capital ship光beam「ドレッドノートDreadnoughtスパークSpark」. A wide, focused beam tears through the pirate command ship, sustained for a good seven seconds, only decohering many miles past its target. (Not that far, as distances in space go; the planet would have been at no risk as a backstop, for example, had the battle been oriented that way.)

The vessel is no longer able to function as a command cruiser, on account of the sections where command was localized having been replaced with a hole!

It still has functional weapons systems, however. At this point the surviving gunners are already firing.

Three fighters move to intercept Marisa.

This is a good opportunity to destroy... two fighters! Two fighters fall to guided missiles.

The tactical priority here is keeping the salvage cruiser from carving more pieces off the Federation cruiser, which is largely accomplished by being in the space between them firing weapons. A second priority is keeping the fighters unable to usefully act against Marisa. Destroying the fighters would privilege the second over the first, so it's only worth doing when they are particularly open and it doesn't take much time.

If more than one fighter were currently pursuing Marisa, she'd pursue them. The zeroth priority is the survival of her actual ally. The Federation cruiser is worth saving but is at best not-openly-hostile.

So it's back to hammering the cruiser for now. She might actually destroy this one soon, it's not that tough and she's willing to spend more missiles.

Marisa is actually aiming to touch down on the former command cruiser's hull, but she's free to take the time to dogfight a fighter.

She summons four laser slaves and chases it down, firing magic missiles. It's using nonmagical physics, and won't be anywhere near as maneuverable as a witch on a broom.

The fighter pilot is not especially good at dodging, and self-destructs!

Marisa slips out of the area of effect. That was pretty dangerous! She'll be wary of that in the future.

It's now time to support her ally. She lands on the wrecked command cruiser.

Samus is under heavy fire, and trying to be hit by a nonnegligible but ultimately harmless amount of fire is tricky.

But she has an opportunity to destroy another fighter when it makes an ill-advised turn, so she's down to two cruisers and one fighter now.

She flies away slightly, then starts a strafing run with missiles against the two cruisers, which are now fairly close together. Their weapons still can't track her effectively; she could let herself be hit once or twice, but that would be dangerous.

What's left of this cruiser isn't equipped to shoot at itself. They might send infantry, but that's unlikely and will take a while.

She can carefully charge a more complex piece of magic. Well, there's a few simplifying assumptions she can make here; but two lasers are inherently trickier than one. She has to keep a bit of attention focused on the fight itself, too, to be sure to hit her targets and not any friendlies. (Samus is fine, she can cut it close there, but they're protecting this deadweight cruiser.)

A small gunship can't herd cruisers, or she'd help. They've been in enough fights together to understand what the other is likely going to do.

Fortunately, the Federation cruiser has been trying to get away, though it had an engine carved off earlier and is not able to do so efficiently. She can be threatening in hopes they won't pursue too closely. The main problem is that their reason to not pursue would be getting better gun tracking on her, and she's been avoiding the cruiser guns. If they give up, it could be a problem.

Actually, they recognize the advanced technology of the gunship, and want it! They're less interested in the Federation cruiser now.

反anti-艦隊fleet光beam「ロックオンLock-OnスパークSpark」. Targets: two.

Firing two beams this wide means keeping track of the interference region where they both emerge from the reactor in her hand, and keeping it stable. The effect on the target cruisers needs no babysitting; they are pulverized, and both satisfyingly explode as their engine confinement is breached.

She smiles a bit inside her armor, annihilating the last enemy fighter without much effort.

Ugh, she is going to have to talk now. She hates this. Apparently the Federation cruiser has been attempting to communicate for a while now.

Fine, she'll take the call.

"This is Captain Isolde Miller of the Dyfed, registry number SV-637727. My crew and I are very grateful for your assistance."

She flies over to the pirate command cruiser to disable its remaining weapons. She should probably say something, but doesn't.

The captain looks at the expressionless helmet coming through on video. She can see focused eyes faintly through the visor. She's kind of intimidated by the legendary space warrior, actually!

"We lost our long-range communications in the attack, and would be additionally grateful if you could contact our fleet for assistance."

Yeah that's fine, she'll hack their systems to find out where their fleet is and impersonate the Dyfed to send a standard distress message, it takes about five seconds because she was already hacking every starship nearby as a matter of course when she landed on the battle, it's actually the main reason she armored up. Destroying more weapons systems in the meantime.

Oh, she almost forgot.

"How many alive on the surface?"

Is that a no on the communications? Best not to press the angry space warrior, especially not with a massively destructive ???witch??? (she's avoiding thinking about that) on the field too.

"We don't know. The surface station hasn't responded, and the pirates were in the system before us. We have to assume the worst."